


Hope is a Four Letter Word

by laniew1



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 06:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8134252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1
Summary: Obi-Wan’s life is simple; he wakes, he eats, he meditates and on some mornings he watches Luke (or the Obi-Wan raises Luke instead AU).





	

Hope is a Four Letter Word 1/?

 

He leaves Luke with Owen and Beru and he’d like to say that he doesn’t give the boy another thought.

That would be a lie, he’s consumed by thoughts because he has nothing but time. Time and sand, an ever growing amount of sand.

He really is not fond of sand in the least.

He doesn’t think only on the boy he’s left with Owen and Beru, he thinks of Anakin and Padme and Yoda and how disappointed Qui-Gon would be in him. He’d tasked Obi-Wan with exactly one task and that was to train Anakin so he could balance the force. He must have done something horribly wrong if Anakin had gone dark.

 

******************************************************************************

 

His life is simple.

He wakes in the morning, he eats some form of mush for breakfast and then he meditates.

For lunch he chooses from a selection of four soups and then he meditates again.

For dinner he has mush and some sort of meat, he doesn’t meditate again instead he watches the holonet for the latest news and practices deep breathing techniques so as to not lose himself in his anger.

The Emperor makes statement after statement, condemning the Jedi Order as assassins though surprisingly enough his name is not listed amongst the Jedi traitors. Reporters theorize that his disappearance means that the Jedi Order had him, along with Anakin who is apparently also missing, killed.

He meditates before he sleeps because otherwise he would be too angry to do so.

He wonders at his name not being on the list, if that means that the Emperor and Anakin believe that he can be turned, or if it simply enough means that they didn’t believe the public would buy him as a villain.

 

******************************************************************************

 

Beru appears on his doorstep with a sobbing Luke after he’s been on Tatooine for a little over six months. He’s been purposefully keeping his distance, he had decided when he gave Luke over to their care that he would give them a year to bond then he could reappear as the mysterious uncle figure.

Just in case Luke ended up being force sensitive, which considering Anakin was his father was extremely likely.

“He just won’t stop crying,” she says, she sounds about near tears herself. “It never really stopped when you left him with us and I’ve tried everything. I change him and feed him and,” Obi-Wan just looks at her because he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do.

He was never that fond of children to be honest, even when he was a child.

He looks at them, Beru looking exhausted and Luke screaming and he takes the boy from her because she obviously expects him to do something and not because the sound of Luke’s crying is breaking the heart that Anakin swore up and down he didn’t have.

He holds the boy awkwardly and Luke hiccups at him, lets out another random sob which must have already been underway and thus he was unable to stop it and then the boy abruptly settles.

Beru just stares at them, and Luke looking peaceful and content albeit with a tear streaked red face and Obi-Wan isn’t sure what sort of picture he makes. He probably looks terrified.

“I think…” she starts and Obi-Wan knows exactly where this is going.

“No,” he says decisively. “Absolutely not.”

 

******************************************************************************

 

Beru leaves them with formula and the bag that she’d brought with her.

“Owen and I’ll come back with the clothes and crib and such,” she says, she runs a finger down the side of Luke’s face and the boy allows it even though he seems disgruntled at someone else touching him.

“This is not a wise idea,” he tries again, because if Anakin or the Emperor find them… Beru just smiles and pats his hand.

“You’ll be fine.”

 

******************************************************************************

 

The boy doesn’t sleep through the night, Obi-Wan makes a little makeshift pallet and the boy sleeps peacefully enough for about an hour before he wakes crying. He changes the diaper, attempts to feed him but the boy will not be appeased and Obi-Wan finally makes a wall of cushions and settles the boy on the bed with him.

He sleeps until morning when Obi-Wan wakes still as exhausted as when he went to sleep; he woke every half hour to make sure he hadn’t rolled over the barricade of pillows and crushed Padme’s son.

“This is not going to become a routine,” he says and Luke stretches out his little arms and yawns at him, his bright blue eyes look at him and already know him to be weak.

 

******************************************************************************

 

It is five years later and Obi-Wan has spent most of that time wondering how they’ve not been found. Anakin had always insisted that he would never voluntarily return to Tatooine, but still…

It’s not like they’re hidden, not in the least, they reside in a hovel less than a 100 miles from Owen and Beru. Beru is a frequent visitor, Owen only visits about once every other month.

He hasn’t even changed his name, Obi-Wan Kenobi became Ben Kenobi which was a pseudonym that Anakin had known him to use on occasion.

Plus Luke is a beacon, any being with an inkling of sensitivity to the force would be able to sense him, he’s five and Obi-Wan has been training him since he was three in how to shield himself. He’s still five though, and though he remembers more often than not, he still forgets periodically.

 

******************************************************************************

 

When Luke started talking the first thing he did was call Obi-Wan ‘papa’. He’d been so shocked when it happened that he’d waited a hairs breadth too long and now Obi-Wan is papa for good. He knows, even at five that Obi-Wan is not his actual father, but Obi-Wan is waiting for him when he gets back from the children’s school that he goes to and that is a papa.

 

******************************************************************************

 

He doesn’t watch as many broadcasts as he should, but watching the Empire take over everything… it kills something deep within him.

So he stops watching, if he doesn’t watch he can’t see the worlds and people that he’d help protect falter and perish under the boot heels of the Empire.

He can’t see the Jedi that managed to survive being publicly executed when they’re run down.

The nights he does watch, he doesn’t sleep. Just lies there listening to the sounds of the desert, of Luke breathing and he knows, deep down in his bones, that their continued survival is entirely dependent on Anakin hating Tatooine as much as he’d always claimed to.

 

******************************************************************************

 

Luke is ten, he has amassed a small collection of friends of which one is another young boy named Biggs Darklighter. The boys are near inseparable and Obi-Wan finds Biggs underfoot in their home as often as Biggs’ mother Farah finds Luke underfoot in theirs.

He tries not to catalog the ways that Luke at ten is different than Anakin at ten. That way can only lead to madness.

The fact that they both leak the force from their very pores is hard to miss though, or ignore. He doesn’t want to train Luke, he ruined Anakin, he doesn’t want to ruin Luke.

There’s no one else though, of the Jedi left he thinks it might only be Yoda and himself. So he does some rudimentary self-defense, shows Luke his lightsaber and how it works. Talk about the Jedi and what they’d stood for and the fact that they’re no longer.

“Does that mean all your friends are gone?” Luke asks with wide, sad eyes brimming with tears. Obi-Wan knows that he’s thinking about what he’d do if all his friends were gone.

“I have you,” Obi-Wan says, “that makes things all the better.” He pulls the boy into a tight hug, Luke clinging to him in return.

 

******************************************************************************

 

“Will I be a Jedi?” Luke asks, he’s leaning into Obi-Wan’s side and now that he knows about the Jedi and Obi-Wan that’s all he wants to talk about.

Obi-Wan has spent the previous day while Luke was at school putting locks on the information that Luke can access. The first result that comes up when a search is done on Jedi is the latest executions and he certainly doesn’t want to be answering the questions and dealing with the nightmares that would be sure to result from Luke seeing any of that.

“You can be whatever you want to be,” Obi-Wan says, Luke is tracing figures over the hilt of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber.

When he looks down at him Luke looks deep in thought, his fingers are idle on the hilt now.

“I think I want to be a pilot,” Luke says, very seriously.

Obi-Wan barely bites back the laugh that threatens to escape.

Because of course he does.

 

******************************************************************************

 

“You know I can take the boys overnight,” Farrah says when she’s dropping them off after school one day.

Obi-Wan looks at her blankly, in the amount of time Luke is gone each day he can meditate, eat, meditate, go through his forms, meditate again and still has at least three standard hours where he really has nothing to do.

Anakin had always told him he needed a hobby and as much as Obi-Wan doesn’t want to agree with anything that Anakin might have thought he thinks he might have been right.

“Just in case you want to,” Farrah pauses and her brow wrinkles, “have a _friend_ over,” she finishes with emphasis.

“I’m okay,” Obi-Wan says. And he’s more than that, he’s content and it’s been an extremely long time since he could say that.

 

******************************************************************************

 

There’s a day, just a random one, nothing special about it at all, that Obi-Wan wakes abruptly with the Force screaming at him. It’s still dark and it mirrors the darkness of the dread winding its way down his spine. There is nothing specific that Obi-Wan can immediately pinpoint in those first few moments of waking as to why.

He reaches out slightly and Luke is still sleeping peacefully, he reaches out a bit more and can feel Anakin sending out winding, searching tendrils of thought in an abstract direction towards him for the first time in years.

Obi-Wan shields himself, making sure the wall between himself and Luke and Anakin is thick and impenetrable and lies awake until the suns come up.

 

******************************************************************************

 

He hasn’t felt the need to contact Bail Organa since they all said their goodbyes and separated the children. But with no way to get hold of Yoda, Bail is his next best option as to determining why Anakin might be looking for him and also someone that might be able to be used as a safe haven for Luke if Anakin manages to find him.

“So this is a friend?” Luke asks, he’s watching Obi-Wan’s fingers, he’s written this all down and told Luke to put it somewhere safe but the Force is clamoring at him to make sure Luke memorizes it as well.

“He was a friend once, I haven’t talked to him in a number of years,” Obi-Wan says, the number is a personal contact code for Bail, hopefully it is still valid and Obi-Wan won’t have to go through channels that are most likely not secure to get in touch with him.

The screen flickers and waves and then solidifies into a Bail’s face, there is much more grey streaking his hair then the last time that Obi-Wan saw him. His own hair has gone the bleached blonde almost white route due to the unrelenting sun of Tatooine.

“Obi-Wan?” Bail says, he looks at him then seems to notice Luke standing next to him and his expression goes very much to a place that indicates that Obi-Wan should be expecting another communication to explain why he has a child.

“Senator Organa,” Obi-Wan inclines his head slightly and after a moment and a nudge Luke does the same next to him. Bail rolls his eyes at him and Obi-Wan allow his lips to curve into a small smile.

“Papa says that you were a friend,” Luke says. “But you’ve never visited us so I don’t know how that makes you a friend.”

“Senator Organa is a very busy man,” Obi-Wan starts.

“If I’d known that Obi-Wan had acquired a child I would certainly have made the time,” Bail interrupts, his face is going through a myriad of expressions, half of which Obi-Wan doesn’t know how to classify.

Luke leans against him and Obi-Wan allows himself to breathe, they’re still safe for the moment.

But only for the moment, the dread is still ever present and he knows that it’s only a matter of time before Anakin or the Emperor find him. He laments not hiding himself better, he should have known that even if he was actively working against them that they wouldn’t just forget about him.

“I have a bad feeling,” he says and Bail nods.

“Say no more, I can have a transport there in a matter of days.”

“Senator…” Bail looks at him, his eyes narrowing slightly, “Bail I can’t ask that of you.”

“You can and you will. You left no way for myself or Yoda to get in touch with you besides where you were going, I didn’t want to draw attention to you so I didn’t initiate a search but…”

“Are things that bad?”

Bail looks thoughtful for a moment, “Things are… interesting.”

Obi-Wan nods and looks over at Luke whose face shows that he very much understands the direction this conversation is possibly going in.

“Are we going to go on a spaceship?” he says in a whisper, eye wide.

Obi-Wan looks at Bail and Bail arches an eyebrow at him.

“I’ll explain things when you get here, they’re… well honestly now that I think about it I don’t even know if interesting is the right word,” Bail says, he’s looking at something off screen and not focusing on Obi-Wan at all.

“We can get transport ourselves to Alderaan,” Obi-Wan finally says, Luke whoops in his ear and bounces away and Bail laughs at his sigh. He doesn’t remember having that much energy when he was Luke’s age, he doesn’t remember _Anakin_ having that much energy at Luke’s age.

“Then we’ll see you in a couple of days.”

“Slightly longer than that, Luke still has a few school days left in the term I’d like him to finish up. We’ll be there after.”

Bail nods and smiles at him, “It’s going to be okay now, Obi-Wan,” he says and before he can say anything in response the screen goes black.

Obi-Wan huffs out a breath and goes to see what kind of disarray Luke has left his room in his hurry to pack up immediately.

 

******************************************************************************

 

While Luke is filled to the brim with excitement over going on a spaceship to another planet he is utterly devastated at the fact that he had to leave his friends behind.

“It won’t be for very long,” Obi-Wan tells Farrah the night before they’re scheduled to leave, the boys are in Luke’s room doing whatever it is that boys do when they’ve been locked at the hip since they started school and now they won’t be.

“You have completely ruined the boy’s plans for the summer, apparently they had ideas for some sort of grand adventure,” Farrah says, she rolls her eyes at the idea of the boys managing to come up with any plan that doesn’t revolve around one of their two homes.

“Well we should be back soon enough that they can still have some sort of grand adventure before school starts back up,” Obi-Wan says.

The Force whispers vaguely to him and he tries not to look at the little home that he and Luke have made like he’ll never see it again.

 

******************************************************************************

 

Their tickets are for a passenger freighter and the trip will take six days, that’s about five days too long in Obi-Wan’s estimation. He’s never been fond of space travel, mostly because the types of transport that he flew on were not designed for comfort.

Luke on the other hand absolutely adores everything about the ship and traveling on it. He runs up and down the hallways and makes friends with the crew.

“They let me on the bridge,” he says breathlessly when they’re eating dinner in their room on their second night. He has a little silver pin on his collar that apparently the captain had given him.

 

******************************************************************************

 

The four hour layover they have at a spaceport before the ship will continue on to Alderaan fills him with such a huge amount of foreboding that he finds it almost impossible to function.

He keeps Luke close, doesn’t allow him off the ship to investigate the spaceport because…

Luke is angry, Obi-Wan would rather have him angry at him then have him in the hands of the Empire. In the hands of the Emperor and Anakin.

It’s almost too much, the Force is screaming at him, actually screaming and it’s telling him to run.

To flee.

To hide.

He takes a breath steadies himself and then stands with purpose.

They might take him, they will almost _certainly_ take him.

They won’t get Luke.

There’s an air vent over the beds and he concentrates just enough to pull the screws out and set the vent cover aside.

Luke is off his bunk watching in fascination.

“Luke,” he starts, he kneels in front of him, touches his face. Brushes a hand over his hair.

“Papa?” Luke’s eyes go very wide and fearful, a direct result of whatever emotion he’s getting off Obi-Wan.

“You remember what I told you, okay. I need you to be good for Senator Organa, listen to what he says, he’ll protect you,” he touches his head, leans their foreheads together. He gives himself a moment and then unhooks his lightsaber and wraps Luke’s hands around it.

“Papa…”

“I’m going to help you up into the vent and I want you to hold on to that and be as quiet as you can possibly be, okay? Don’t make a sound, when you get to Alderaan someone will come find you,” he’s sure of this. Bail will have someone waiting for them and when they don’t appear…

“I will see you again, okay? I need you to be brave for the next bit but I will see you again.”

The Force assures him of this, a warm caress and he knows that it will do whatever it takes to protect Luke until Obi-Wan can get back to him.

Luke is crying, silent tears running down his cheeks.

“Papa,” he sobs, he flings himself at Obi-Wan, arms wrapping around his shoulders tightly as Obi-Wan hugs him back.

“I love you, don’t forget that, okay?”

“I won’t, I promise,” Luke says, his face is wet against his neck and Obi-Wan has no time to calm him down.

The Force is restless, _hide the boy, hide the boy, out of time, why are you dawdling_? It’s muttering and Obi-Wan presses a kiss to the side of Luke’s head. He helps him climb up into the vent.

“As far back as you can go,” he says and Luke makes a noise that sounds like a whisper. “Quiet as you can be.” He steps back and hears Luke whimper as he slides the vent back up against, tightens the screws that much more then they need to be so as to deter someone immediately looking in that direction and barely has enough time to turn around before the door is forced open.

He holds his hands out and they don’t give him the opportunity to say a word before they stun him.

 


End file.
